Grit Lab Report

Hi Sarah,

Welcome to your personalized Grit Lab Report!

We will go week by week, reviewing everything you have told us through Poll Everywhere.

We hope this will help you reflect on what you have learned and experienced during Grit Lab.

Important note!

Sometimes, you may not have been able to respond to all polls.

If the data for one of the polls is missing, the automatic report will display NA, or ““.

Okay, let’s get started!

The first half of Grit Lab delves deep intp the passion facet of Grit.

We like to call it Choose Easy, because we think gritty people pursue what they enjoy.

Putting it graphically, gritty people tend to pursue the intersection of these four circles.

The first time we met, you told us where you were on the grit rubric.

Regarding passion you picked Stage 3: I’m actively figuring out what my interests are by trying one or more of them out in some way .

Regarding perseverance you picked .

As you know, grit grows, so don’t worry if you are not yet where you’d like to be in your grit journey.

Hopefully, this class will help you become grittier each day.

In week 2, we looked at your interests.

Interest is an emotion, and it is the opposite of boredom.

Your interests are the activities or subjects that spontaneously grab your attention.

Trying things out and seeing how you feel is the best way to refine your interests.

In week 3, we studied values, your beliefs about what is important.

You said your top three values were benevolence, tradition, and security.

You wrote a “This I Believe” essay, and here’s where you located it on Schwartz’s value taxonomy.

When we talked about strengths in week 4, you said your personality strength was agreeableness.

You said your top three talents were social, spiritual, and verbal.

We then talked about goal hierarchies.

You said you had a pretty good idea about your top-level goal.

We discussed self-concordance, or how much a goal aligns to your deeply held values and beliefs.

A goal you said you will be pursuing for the next six months is to winning a league championship .

Here is how self-concordant that goal was:

Don’t worry if your self-concordance for that particular goal is low.

It might mean that you need to reframe that goal in a way that makes it more relevant to your deep self, or change it!

Remember that self-concordance is goal specific, so other goals might be more self-concordant.

We then transitioned to the second part of Grit Lab:

Work Smart

In week 6, we looked at goal setting and planning.

You WOOPed!

For your Wish, what you wanted to accomplish, you said Do the extra set of bleachers .

For your Outcome, what would happen if your wish came true, you said Teammates will push themselves more! .

For you Obstacle, what it is within you that stands in your way, you said Feeling lazy/tired .

For your Plan, you created this when-then plan to achieve your goal: When I will complete the third set, then I will walk back to the bleachers .

Whether you changed your WOOP or stuck to that one, here’s where it landed between being a total fail, and going exactly according to plan.

And here’s how much you learned

These goals are hard, and despite our best efforts, our plans can fail.

The important thing is that you learn something along the way!

In week 7, we talked about deliberate practice.

You shared you’ve done daily practice in Athletics .

We learned that deliberate practice requires a challenging, hyperspecific goal, maximum concentration, instant feedback, and is often done alone.

In week 8, we discussed feedback.

Even though feedback can be hard to take, it is often the key to improve. So if you want to improve, seek it actively!

You said you felt Driven when receiving critical feedback, and Driven when receiving positive feedback.

We then turned to learning about stress.

In week 9, you reported feeling a moderate amount of stress in your life right now, the primary source of it being relationships .

We also talked about adversity and failure.

Although related, adversity and failure are different:

Adversity happens to us, whereas failure is something for which we are generally more responsible.

However, how we interpret stress and failure matters…

Interestingly, research has found that people who believe that stress can facilitate learning and growth experience enhanced performance, well-being, and health.

And failure—not achieving a particular goal—can be interpreted as “I’m learning!” and lead you to look for the lesson in that experience.

We closed the Work Smart section of the class by talking about habits.

Throughout the semester, you practice habit building using your Build-A-Habit Guide book.

You describe the habit you chose as Health .

Whether you were successful in habit building or not, this is how much you learned.

Finally, what good is grit if we do not dream for others?

So, we transitioned to Paying it Forward.

In week 10, we looked at mentors: role models that take an active role in your growth.

Hopefully, your mentor was authoritative, being both supportive and demanding.

Here’s how you described them:

You also wrote a gratitude letter to Other .

In one word, you said it made you feel Joyful .

One way of paying it forward is having a prosocial, beyond-the-self purpose. Here’s how you responded to items assessing that.

… and so quickly we arrived at the end of the semester.

Here’s how your mood varied over these weeks.

Do you notice any patterns? Is there anything that correlates with your mood?

Here you can scroll through all the quotes you wrote to summarize each class.

Important to know when to quit and when to grit
Curiosity makes you smarter
Today I learned that it's very important to think about how you can combine your "heart, will, and mind" in your job and actively search for ways to do that
"Because it's part of my goal hierarchy, it matters"
When-then plans increase the accessibility of our cues, and thus help us get closer to achieving our goals.
The quality of effort is so important! It's not enough to practice a ton if it's not deliberate.
Ask for advice!!
The ability to manage your adversity and failure is really important because it lets you move "onwards and upwards"
Set up your situation for success by using systems.
"Example is not the main thing influencing others. It is the only thing."

In the final class, we looked back to everything we’ve learned together and to how our passion and perseverance evolved during this class.

Here are the comments from your Grit Lab Teammates:

Matthew Ty
Hi Sarah! You were so kind and nice. I loved how you would always offer to go up front to bring candy back for the team. You also checked in with me a lot regarding my progress with my discovery project as well how my week has been going, which I really appreciate. Personally, I learned to become more sweet and nice from you, especially when you shared about how your habit was to text your mom good morning everyday, which made me reflect on my habits haha. For your discovery project, I really enjoyed how you walked us through the process of cooking. I am personally interested in learning how to cook as well, and your project gave me ideas such as having curiosity conversations, asking others for help, learning about gastrophysics, and more. It was also fun to learn about how you placed importance on habit formation (savoring and waiting before meals, which I try to apply in my daily life. I really hope you get to continue this passion for cooking (and hopefully get to eat something besides salmon and broccoli).
Allegra Hill
Sarah has been a delightful teammate, and her positive attitude and empathy for others have brought such a bright light to our team. She is very genuine, and you can feel that even after one conversation with her. Her friendly demeanor introduced a comforting warmth and tranquility to our team dynamic. I really enjoyed being Sarah’s teammate throughout the semester! Sarah’s discovery project centered around cooking was an accurate reflection of her personality because it resonated with her genuine and warm nature. Throughout the semester, she expressed a desire to connect her project, at least partially, to her sister’s husband’s cultural background as a means to better connect with his family. Initially considering learning Punjabi to enhance communication with her brother-in-law’s family, Sarah ultimately redirected her focus to preparing traditional dishes. It was heartwarming that she still found a way to include her brother-in-law’s family, and his mother played a role as a mentor in Sarah’s presentation. As I also directed my discovery project toward cooking and baking, it was particularly enlightening to see how a team member who shares similar experiences with me took her cooking-related project in a different direction. It seems that we both gained varied insights from our projects, all while remaining committed to enhancing our skills in the kitchen. Her newfound dedication to cooking was evident throughout the semester and her presentation, and I look forward to seeing how Sarah expands her culinary skills in the near future.

We hope you have emerged from Grit Lab a little grittier than you started.

Do you want to see how your grit rubric changed?

Drumroll please…

Don’t worry if the rubric doesn’t yet reflect growth. It is only a coarse measure that cannot replace your own self-reflection.

In any case, grit is not built in a day…

…remember that progress is never smooth…

…so stay passionate and persevering in the lifelong quest of choosing easy, working smart, and paying it forward.

With grit and gratitude,

Angela and the Grit Lab team.